Koźle

Koźle () is a district of Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland, located in the western part of the city at the junction of the Kłodnica and Oder rivers, km southeast of Opole. The district has a Roman Catholic church, a medieval chateau, remains of a 19th-century fortress and a high school. Koźle's industries include a shipyard and an inland port.

== History == thumb|upright|left|Saint Sigismund church The settlement was first mentioned in the early 12th-century Gesta principum Polonorum, the oldest Polish chronicle. Its name comes from the Polish word kozioł, which means "goat". As a result of the fragmentation of Poland, from 1281 to 1355 Koźle was the seat of a splinter eponymous duchy ruled by a local branch of the Piast dynasty. Also in 1281, Koźle obtained town rights. After 1355, it remained under the rule of other branches of the Polish Piast dynasty until 1532, when it was absorbed to Bohemia. In 1431, Duke Konrad VII the White founded a Monastery of the Order of Friars Minor in Koźle. It was besieged several times during the Thirty Years War, and in 1645, it returned to Polish rule under the House of Vasa.